Diversity is often presented as a series of affirmative action initiatives or a statistical analysis of the workplace. However, what is missed is how diversity benefits an organization and the potential pitfalls that can arise.
This Achievers Tech Talk features Natasha Lala, VP of Engineering at OANDA. Natasha handles the technical teams that build the software for a foreign exchange trading system transacting billions per day. In addition, she has led large scale projects in the CRM, telecom, and financial industries for SOMA Networks and IBM. Throughout her career, she has been responsible for technology deployments all over the world including Canada, The United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. It’s safe to say that she likes to travel!
In this talk, Natasha Lala focuses on an example of how diversity matters to those in a technical field. She uses the case study of a complex foreign exchange trading system several oceans away. As a small, agile development shop in Toronto, OANDA deployed its high-frequency trading system inside a multinational bank in Hong Kong. This involved a variety of technical, geographical, and cultural challenges for which diversity was both the problem and the solution.
